Posted on 05/24/2009 6:04:29 AM PDT by reaganaut1
IT has been a busy week or two for the ethics police — those within The Times trying to protect the paper’s integrity, and those outside, ready to pounce on transgressions by Times journalists.
Thomas Friedman, the star columnist, returned a $75,000 speaking fee after accepting it from a California government agency in violation of a Times guideline. Maureen Dowd, another star columnist, was roughed up on the Internet for using a paragraph from a blogger without attribution. And Edmund Andrews, an economics writer, began promoting a memoir describing how he took out subprime mortgages he couldn’t possibly repay even as he covered the subprime mess — including efforts to help homeowners in danger of default, like him.
Each situation raised a different issue. Here is a look at each:
Covering your own crisis
In the fall of 2007, Andrews went to his editors with a book proposal. He wanted to tell how the subprime mortgage crisis happened — greedy lenders, regulators who looked the other way and people like himself who made foolish choices.
Though the timing was terrible for The Times — Andrews was the main Washington reporter on the story — he burned to illuminate a national crisis through his personal experience. And he had another strong reason: He needed money.
“I was desperate,” he said. He still is. Seven months behind on his mortgage, he may lose his home unless “Busted,” which comes out this week, is a hit.
When Craig Whitney, the standards editor, read Andrews’s proposal, he asked, “Can you really keep covering this issue if you’re personally involved?”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Boy, will a lot of high school freshmen be glad to see your take on things you tin-plated hypocrite.
Friedman said he hoped for more clarity. “Bottom line for me: The people in Oakland got a free lecture,..."he said.
things that are worthless ought to be free, Tom.
The Edmund Andrews story (the third one mentioned, after Friedman and Dowd) is the biggest, IMO.
I ended up at Huffington Post yesterday (either via a link from here or elsewhere), and people there were just furious with this guy, and the NYT, if you can believe that! Turns out Mr. Andrews, who wrote a book about the subprime mortgage debacle and how it affected him, is married to a woman who has already declared bankruptcy and who will now do so with him as well. However, he actually left this fact out of his book, thinking that it was immaterial. Really?
Anyway, from the excerpts I read, he himself made very poor decisions, borrowing much more than he knew he could pay back, and being very sloppy with answers to loan applications. And he assumed his wife would get a well paying job. I guess I could assume I would be Miss America someday, but that wouldn’t be valid, either.
But for the economics writer of the NYT to put out a book with this content is just hysterical. Exactly why should we be taking this guy’s advice?
This is like having Dick Cheney as the Onsbudsmen for the Bush Administration.
Hoyt missed the whole point on Andrews. Andrews was using the Times to advertise his own book. Therein lies the real conflict of interest.
Actually, I missed that point, too. I was too wrapped up in this guy’s incompetence!
It seems Thomas Friedman was the one who had his hand slapped the hardest. I don’t have a problem at all with him accepting speaking fees. If people want to pay to listen to him, good for him. I don’t understand why this is considered “unethical” by the NYT. What is the fundamental difference between people paying for spoken words on the side, as in the case of Friedman, and people paying for written words on the side, as in the case of Andrews and his book deal?
Dowd should have been fired, but seems to face no consequence at all. She plagarized, flat out. But I guess that it OK at the NYT.
I don’t have a problem with Andrews professional conduct, but his personal conduct. Again, if he wants to write a book, and people want to buy it, good for him. I disagree with his personal conduct and attitude, though. He took out loans that he had no hope of repaying, and it is somehow the greedy lender’s fault? Society (meaning my family, and all others who have been living within their means and paying their bills on time) owe him a bailout? I don’t think so. His book does put an emotional face on the mortgage/banking crisis, and it is not a sympathetic face.
Jeannine
So the NYT writers are being exposed as frauds? Freepers have known that fact for years.
It’s called hypocrisy. One of the two prerequisites for being a lib. Shamelessness is the second.
I'm sure that we will hear soon enough of the plight of people in Oakland unable to get food stamps. Wouldn't $75,000 buy a few food stamps?
And this is only ONE transaction. How many speakers have been paid this amount of money by the city of Oakland in the last five years? How many such speakers throughout the state? Seventy-five thousand here and seventy-five thousand there, and pretty soon you're looking at some real money.
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